


Between Sand and Sea

by Brit Hux-Tico (birchwoods01)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux the Spy, Brief mentions of injury, Canon Universe, F/M, Gingerflower, Gingerose, Gingerrose - Freeform, Post-TRoS, Reference to dead family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-23 10:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23076478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birchwoods01/pseuds/Brit%20Hux-Tico
Summary: He should have grown up between the sand and the sea.Armitage Hux has just been discovered as the Resistance Spy. Having been shot and presumed dead, tossed into the trash compactor like common refuse, he contemplates his life choices: both those he made and those made for him. His spy handler, Rose Tico, works against the clock to try and rescue him from the cloak of death.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico
Comments: 49
Kudos: 123





	Between Sand and Sea

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this piece partially out of mourning one of my favorite Star Wars Sequel Trilogy characters, the day I learned from the novelization that his death was indeed canon. 
> 
> I marvel to myself how one's life could be so subtly different, if something as small as the choice of who raises you as a human being were to have been changed, how could the entire course of history change?
> 
> If someone had shown kindness to Armitage in his youth, would Starkiller have even been born? 
> 
> Thank you to [@Leggies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leggies/pseuds/Leggies) and [@SheWalksInBeauty26](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheWalksInBeauty26) for doing a super fast Beta read of this for me. I appreciate it immensely!
> 
> Also, [ @ElfMaidenOfLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/pseuds/ElfMaidenOfLight) graciously allowed me the use of _gingersnap_ as Hux's spy codename with Rose. So from here on out, I will be referring to him as such, and Rose as _thornflower_. So cute!

He should have grown up between the sand and the sea. He should have been surrounded with color, sharp bits of shell, smooth pearl, roughened coral dipped from the sea and placed upon a shelf where it sits prettily for all time. He should have had books, and paper, graphite stems he could wear into little nubs by the dim hololights in the early morning hours, penning out his ideas, creating, tinkering. 

If he had been molded by the hands and words and emotions of a poet, a painter, a chef, an architect, a  _ mother _ , and not pressed, churned, melted in the fiery, tormentable crucible of a soldier, what would have been different in his life, his temperament, his personality? His creations: would they remain monstrous and cruel? Would they consume life and energy, swallow entire star systems and turn planets into dust? Or would they support life and love and joy? Would they turn trinkets into artifacts of art and beauty, proof of a life loved while lived?

He should embody rain and ocean water, not smoke and ash and fire. His eyes should be green as foam from the sea, not gray and hard as durasteel starships built to destroy. He should have grown up comfortable in his own flesh, warm and delightful, a skinny reed like stalks of seaweed in gentle currents: graceful and lithe, not hard and too tall and too stiff, masquerading a show of masculine strength he didn’t really have. He should know what love is. He should know all of its facets, it’s smooth touches, the beat of its heart, the warmth of its affection, the fire of its power to overcome all. 

As death comes for him, it is too late. There will be no mourners, no tears for the wicked. Millions of decisions led to this moment; half of them were made for him before he knew any better about the world, some made because what had been beautiful about him had been destroyed, others made because he was ambitious, cruel, determined, defensive,  _ rabid _ . 

Paranoia could have saved his life, as the beskar plate beneath his uniform can attest, bent in against his cracked and broken ribs from being fired upon at point-blank range with a military-grade trooper blaster. He can hardly move. He is pinned beneath two large, metal bars, sitting in stinking, liquid refuse. His thigh and chest are wet with blood. He also tastes it on his lips. 

“Come in,  _ gingersnap _ . Do you copy?”

The voice did not immediately register to him. His thoughts continued to spiral, nose-diving into an abyss of despair, as he pondered his current position. Had he been too ambitious? He had played the wrong hand, misinterpreted his opponents next moves, came too close to the flames. The strategy should have worked: pitch the Resistance a bone so they could remove Palpatine’s reanimated corpse from the board, hopefully Ren and his  _ girl _ would be caught in the crosshairs and leave the galaxy back in the hands of those who valued grit, hard work, cunning, logic, and reason over a  _ mystical Force _ .

Time was running out. He had to find the flaw in the system, the error in his master plan, the frayed thread, before he met the black darkness of oblivion. He needed to know how he’d failed. His gloved hands curled over one of the metal bars holding him down, attempting to lift it to no prevail, a knee-jerk motion of survival.

The voice on the comms device in his ear had not disconnected. There was the soft, wavering and wet sound of tears, as well as the static of a second comms unit clicking on. 

His lips pressed weakly together and he swallowed blood and saliva, emitting a groan. 

“Finn, please…,” the voice was pleading, soft and shaking as it spoke into the other comm’s unit. 

Something unintelligible was mumbled in the background, coming from the second unit. 

“I know!” the voice shouted, angry and impatient. “I know what he’s done but you can’t just-,”

The room around him faded to black then slowly returned, blurring around the edges of his vision. They had thrown him away like their shit and urine, their vomit, their scraps and waste. A lifetime of devotion to the First Order and here is his inheritance, his prize, Supreme Leader of Sewage. His reign would be short-lived.

“ **Please** Finn… please,” the voice quietly sobbed. “We can salvage him. I know it.”

She spoke the traitor’s chosen name, disgusting, and that word, what an odd word to use:  _ salvage _ , as if he were a star destroyer wrecked on the torched plains of some sandy planet with parts and pieces still left of useful value. He wanted to tell her how hilarious and inaccurate her terminology was, exactly how wrong she was about him. Deep, deep, deep down, however, he knew he’d always been a wreck. It’s just that there was nothing left to salvage, nothing good, nothing whole. He had dismembered himself slowly over his thirty-five years, given so much away to an Order that only knew how to take. But he had believed in it. He had trusted it, put all of his faith in it because it had been all he had, all he’d ever known. 

If only he’d grown up between the sand and sea…

“Hold on, Hux,” the voice urged him gently. 

He chastised her.  **_General Hux_ ** _ , insubordinate Rebel Scum. _ But no sound came out of his mouth except for a hushed and bitter moan of pain. 

“They-... the Resistance is on their way,” she promised him, her voice warm with hope despite the sound of her tears. 

Why was she crying? Why show such weakness?

“I’m so sorry. It wasn’t supposed to end like this…”

The room went black before his eyes. He could only hear his shallow, rattling breaths, the heavy thumping of his heart as it slowed in tempo, and her soothing voice in his ear. 

“Just hold on-,” 

Her voice faded away, and he knew nothing more. 

Silence. 

Stillness.

Then… light… warmth… feeling…

A leather gloved palm glistened with droplets of seawater and rain, held out over churning waves against a sea-spanned horizon. He breathed deep through his nose, smelling salt and dew and cloud, the wisp of some fragrant night blossom carried on the breeze. Waves lapped at his feet and calves, cresting at his thighs, tugging on the fabric of his black uniform as it ripped away from him in foamy swirls. Sand fell away beneath his heavy boots and he sank deep, unable to pivot without churning the sand and leaning with his entire body. 

“Armitage!”

He turned at the sound, red hair falling over his forehead and cheeks, clinging to his pale flesh as it became plastered with rain.

A woman stood on the shore, the one who had spoken his name. He looked at her for a long time, confused.

“Hey! Armitage,” she called again.

_ Rose…? _ He breathed to himself.

No, not Rose, a thieving body with the voice of Rose. This was not the physical form of  _ thornflower _ , the woman who had been his spy handler in the Resistance for just under a year, who had done so reluctantly, disgusted and enraged by him, who was now perhaps the only living person in the entire galaxy who had ever shed tears in his honor. 

This woman sounded like Rose but she had red hair; just like his. She was taller than Rose, leaner, skin and bone, with pale seafoam green eyes. She wore all white, a plain, simple gown. Her cheeks were gaunt and pale, lilac shadows under her eyes, but she was beautiful, fragile, soft. 

“Mother?”

The woman smiled at him. Her arms slowly raised out to her sides and she held them open. 

He shuffled forward, trudging through the wet sand with step after careful step. As he came into shallower water, his booted feet loosened and he stepped faster, higher, raising his knees to splash forward, breaking into a run as soon as he was clear of the water. 

He ran to her. She enveloped him in her embrace. 

“Armitage… my boy.” 

Her voice had changed as she breathed into his ear, now accented with a familiar lilt he remembered from his brief youth on Arkanis, before it had been destroyed. He trembled and became small again, pressed against her, the warmth of her existence overwhelming him in bright light. It surrounded him, the blaze of stars, forming a barrier between their figures and the rain. 

His face was wet once more, but this time with the sheen of tears. They streaked one by one down, numerous and glistening, his expression tearing open, reflecting the agony of his shame, pain, and regret. He clung to her, desperate, held her so tightly to him as if loosening his hold on her would send her back into the night, into the cavernous hold of death. 

“I am… so sorry…,” cried the boy, the one who died so many years ago when his father had taken him away, when they had both left her to the bombs and rubble. 

“I’m sorry… so sorry… forgive me, forgive me…”

He continued, babbling in his anguish, the messy words of a child and all the earnestness of a contrite spirit. Her hands stroked through his hair as she cradled him through his harsh sobs, holding him together as he threatened to pull apart, her steady embrace tying his trembling limbs.

“It’s okay,” she whispered soothingly. “I do. I forgive you.”

Her fingers massaged tenderly over his scalp. 

Something wiped away at his tears. 

“I forgive you…”

_ Rose? _

Armitage opened his eyes. 

A hand was in his hair, stroking so gently, again and again. His cheeks were wet. His eyes burned, even in the dim light of the room. He tried to lift his hands but they would not obey. His chest felt heavy and stiff, so sore every breath was agony, and a heavy pain pulsed behind his eyes at the front of his skull, tight and explosive. 

“I forgive you,” the one stroking his hair whispered softly. 

He turned his head slowly over and she made a sound of surprise, pulled away from him, her fingers growing still in his hair. 

“You’re awake!”

She sounded happy but unsure, bittersweet, and pulled her hand away from his hair as she leaned in and up toward him. She took a cloth to his cheeks, dabbing away what he now realized must be actual tears, ones he could not remember crying. He stared at her, the smells and sounds of the ocean still heady in his senses. 

“Where… am I?” he tested, his voice a dry crackle from misuse.

“Med-bay… Resistance base,” Rose murmured softly. 

“Why… why was I…,” he could not bring himself to say it, to call attention to his weakness by asking about his tears. 

“You… were dreaming about your mother,” Rose uttered in hushed, delicate tones. “You called out for her.”

Hux’s face flooded with heated shame. He had thought he’d been dead. He’d even welcomed it, welcomed the idea that he could join his mother again, if this be the will of fate, even if he didn’t deserve it. 

He pointedly ignored Rose’s stare, his scalp still singing from the memory of her touch. He glared at the ceiling and tried to shift his hands to sit up on the bed he was lying in, but they would not budge. A glance sideways revealed they were clasped in binders and fixed to the side railing of the bed-unit. He flooded with dread. 

“Am I a prisoner?”

Rose did not reply, but shifted uneasily in her seat. 

“When am I to be executed?”

His tone was even, clear, betraying not even the tiniest hint of emotion. Rose, however, drew in a sharp breath at the sound of that word, and got to her feet beside him, fists clenched. 

“I’m not going to let that happen.”

She sounded so fierce, so determined, Hux wondered what he’d done to earn her loyalty. He had to admit they had grown closer as they had worked together, spymaster and spy. A different Armitage of a different time, raised by a mother instead of a father, could have loved her already. She was everything that he valued and respected, just on the wrong side of the war. 

So he laughed at her, the sound cold and harsh, ringing with cruelty. 

“Why?” he challenged, his tone acidic. “Did I say something in my sleep that’s given you hope I’m not the monster you thought I was?”

Rose stared at him, eyes narrowed distrustfully, glittering with unshed tears. 

“You apologized.”

The two words hung between them, heavily insistent in the implications. Armitage tried to keep up his solid front, his mask of steel, meeting her stare with the fire of his own, but he was beginning to tire, to waver.

“It’s not like I was apologizing to you,” he said after a long moment, grasping at straws. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Rose uttered firmly. “I forgave you anyway.”

Hux finally looked away, chilled not by her words, but by the softening look in her eye. 

“I forgive you for your part in the death of my family,” she took a deep breath, then continued. “For your part in the destruction of my home, for Starkiller and Hosnian Prime, for…,”

She hesitated, waited moments until he had given his attention back to her, their eyes meeting. She trembled at the connection. 

“I forgive you for trying to have me killed.”

Hux understood that rationally, forgiveness was for the person who had been hurt. Forgiving him allowed her to move on with her life. Forgiving him allowed her to find peace, to let go of hatred, to heal. This had nothing to do with him. Yet somehow, the realization didn’t make him feel any better. 

He turned slowly away from her, wondering why he was suddenly longing to go back to that beach, to that woman he had missed out on so much time with. It had likely only been a dream, not death as he’d thought in his delusioned and weakened state. Death was nothing, blackness, ceasing to exist. He believed this. 

But a tiny piece of him wanted her back. He’d always wanted her back.

A single tear ran down his cheek.

His eyes widened, his fists clenching beneath the bindings, and he felt a rage suddenly begin to build within him. With his hands tied down, he could not remove the tear. If he could not remove the tear, he appeared weak, and his enemy was standing right there, already with the upper hand in that he was weak, foolish, bound, and at the mercy of her arrogance to believe that he needed absolution from her. 

The realization of all this built in fury, and he tore at his bindings, shaking the bed with twists of his hips, letting out a sudden scream of rage and terror and agony, feeling the metal bite into his wrists. As his cry descended into a dry sob, he closed his eyes and did his best to accept that he could do nothing. 

The tears streamed down his face. 

Next to him, she sniffled.

He hated it. Pity. It made him want to vomit. 

But there were fingertips on his cheeks, warm. They delicately touched each tear and dried them away. When more followed, she cleared those, too. She never said a word.

Time passed and the tears stopped. Hux was watching her now, wary but calm, accustomed to her presence. She did not touch him, but watched him with a mixture of sorrow and hope, a little hint of cherished longing. 

Eventually, she broke the silence. 

“You know,” she whispered, folding her hands in her lap. “Before you can accept my forgiveness, or even that of your mother… you have to forgive yourself.”

Easier said than done, he wanted to say. He wasn’t even sure he wanted it. 

“What’s the point? I’ll be executed by the Resistance whether I address this or not.”

Rose fixed her gaze on him, two brown orbs so fierce and frightening he wondered why she had not been General of everything instead of him. 

“I saved your life. You owe me a debt. And you’re going to pay for it.”

Orders. Commands. Actions. He understood this language. It was familiar to him. He’d spent his life falling into line and obeying, speaking when spoken to and when he had brilliant things to say. 

He did not have brilliant things to say now. But perhaps he could follow someone who did. 

She was waiting for him somewhere between the sand and sea. But somehow, he mused to himself, he believed his mother would have liked Rose. 

“Of course, Lieutenant General. As you order.”

The words tasted sour on his tongue. But the smile she gave him was worth it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ardentlyloveyou)! 
> 
> If you liked what you read, please leave a comment! I thrive on feedback from my readers, so if you want me to continue to create content, please let me know!


End file.
